Friday Giveaway: contest closed

Back with a winner in a moment

Hello faithful Forgotten Bookmarks readers. I plan on having the usual Friday giveaway today, but I wanted to get your thoughts on something first.

As most of you know, I have a book coming out in a few months. I've been told that book trailers are a great way to get the word out, and I tend to agree. Most of the ones I've checked out have been funny, exciting, inspiring - all the things you want potential readers to feel. The problem I'm facing is that I have no idea what I'm doing. Most trailers are about two minutes long, and I'm not sure how I'd fill up two seconds.

So what do you think? Anyone have any grand ideas? What kinds of things would you like to see in a short video like this?

I'd love to hear any and all comments and thoughts - and advice, if you have any. Feel free to leave them below as you enter today's giveaway.

Now, on to the free book:

Today's giveaway book is "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway. This is a lovely Franklin Library edition from 1979: half leather binding with lots of gilt, sewn-in ribbon bookmark, illustrations by Bernard Fuchs. To be honest, I want to keep it for myself.

To enter, leave a comment here, or on Facebook or Twitter. I'll pick a winner at random tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM EST.

I like everyone to be happy, so if the winner is chosen from Facebook, I'll run a contest for the other two sites, and so on. You get the picture - everybody gets a chance.

Ok, for the quick question: Just put up a script for the video. With a few closeups from the book and the bookmarks, and a nice off voice, it would do the trick. Some white or black background to make it clean, and background music.The description you have in the post where you announce the book would be great for the script, I think you shouldn't change it. So there it is, your trailer-teaser book!(BTW, count me in the giveaway!)

1) An stop motion animation of books opening and revealing their forgotten treasures.

2) A story within a story. Basically you could tell quick, 2 minute fiction about the story behind a photograph or similar found within the book. Example: 1950's girl eating ice cream cone. Girl being photographed. Photograph appearing in book 50 years later.

Hemingway... yes please. To answer your question, recommend you contact your nearest Art Institute and ask if a senior videography student would like to take on your project. My kid is a senior at the AI - Dallas and would love something like that, would probably do it for free too. There's several AI's around the country.

I'd never heard of a book trailer before, but I checked out your link and I'm sure it would be a good idea for your new book. I don't really have any suggestions, other than to show the bookmarks and the books they were found in just like you do on the blog. Thanks for another fun giveaway - and if you're in Irene's path, I hope you'll be safe.

I read For Whom The Bell Tolls recently and nearly died from love of it~

(I retweeted on Twitter too, not sure if that disqualifies one of these entries)

It seems a fading in and out of different "bookmarks" would make the most sense (I'm assuming the book is based on the blog?), perhaps with some sort of narration over? You should get the guy who does all the narration for the major blockbusters. =)